Southern Intellect

2005 was the year Houston, Texas finally got its shine as a certified hip-hop city. Major labels have been descending on the city in a virtual feeding frenzy looking for the next Paul Wall, Mike Jones or Slim Thug artists who represent what has come to be known as the Houston Sound.

The Houston Sound is defined rather narrowly by what is known as a car culture. The city is known for being so large and cumbersome that many of its inhabitants look at their cars like their second homes. Listen to most of the records to come out of Houston in past years and you'll hear many references to pop trunks, candy paint and the many styles of tires and rims that are available to soup up your ride. It might sound funny to some, but it s been a trend here for years and the rest of the world is just now catching on to it.

But what about the Houston artists who buck the trends in hopes of adding to the game rather than just contributing to it? What about the Houston artists who have more to talk about than merely their cars? Where do they fit in?

Southern Intellect represents another side of Houston. While all of the members, the main MC s being T and Don Juan, came up in the same hoods as most of your favorite rappers -- Houston s notorious North Side they refuse to be pigeonholed as just your average Houston MC's.

Southern Intellect is like a southern hip-hop movement. Don Juan explains, It s not just MC s or certain aspects of the culture it s more like a movement of the culture as a whole. Basically we all started off as kids who were either DJing or B-Boying doing Graffiti or rhyming and everybody was doing their piece of the culture on the North Side. In the same hoods you got the Geto Boys and Swishahouse from.

Listening to their self-titled and self-released debut from 2004 -- you ll hear aspects of what makes the Houston sound so popular but you ll also hear deeper influences running throughout. Southern Intellect stays true to their name by kicking the lyricism up a notch and they are not afraid to work with different sounding beats.

Man when we were coming up, we were listening to everything. T remembers, N.W.A., Geto Boys, DOC, Gangsta NIP, 8 Ball, Dj Quick, Terrorists, Cypress Hill, EPMD, UGK, Aceyalone, Wu Tang. Whatever coast, as long as it was jammin , we just loved hip-hop. That range of influence shines bright on all of their material.

On their next release, Can You Relate, you ll hear an even broader scope with tracks ranging from straight up H-Town trunk bangers to Latin influenced beats. With this album we hit them with a wide spectrum. T continues, Everyday our feelings are different, so when we are in the studio we recorded something different according to how we feeling that day. We try to hit you with different angles and not limit ourselves. We have some club songs, some gangster/street stuff, we even have some laid back stuff you can just sit and blaze to, it s all a fusion. But at the end of the day it s still hip-hop and it's still some southern shit growing out of H-Town.

Their story isn't that much different from other artists out of Houston. They came up in the streets, doing what many young people do in those streets, and they bonded over their love for music. And like so many, it just may have saved them. Don Juan doesn't like to talk much about his past endeavors, one of which lead to him being shot in the face and almost killed, but he also doesn't want to hide that fact as he hopes that other young people can learn from him.

I don't want to exploit the fact that I was shot in the face. Don Juan explains, But one thing I want to get across to those who know is that I was doing the wrong thing in my life when I got shot. I was into a lot of bad shit and someone was either hating on me or someone was jealous and I ended up getting shot in the face and I learned from it.

I tell you what, ain't nothing cool about getting shot man. He continues, I went through psychological shit after that shit. I almost died and I did'n t know how to deal with that. People from the hood don't have nobody to talk to about that shit. I know people who have had homeboys die in their arms or witnessed their homeboys death and they don't have anyone to talk to. That shit fucked me up in the head, but at the same time God removed the pressure off me and I changed how I was living. People glorify that shit and I hate that knowing that I lost loved ones and almost lost my own life over that. I try to keep that the thing that I talk the least about. But we all from the hood, straight up, so it's a part of us.

And that's what it s all about, passing that Southern Intellect on to the masses. Showing them that there's more to Houston than the Candy Coated Slabs on Swangas and Gangsta shit. I mean, there s plenty of that too, but there s a whole sub-underground in Houston waiting to be unearthed. One that can't be pigeonholed and is just as jammin as anything you ve heard thus fa - Hater Magazine

Southern Intellect also known as S.I., is a group from Houston, TX. The four members are Don, Turtle, Ragland and Shadow Black. Later on the group added more members like J-O and his brother, Tunes. This is their self titled and self produced debut album. It was released in 2004 on Dirty Communication. Production is handled by Shadow Black and Turtle. The beats are a casual blend of rhythm and soul. This unbelievable task is not only hard to do but it is done with perfection on this record. Their original lyrics are solid as well. They contain constant word play and are very harmonic. Features are courtesy of Devin The Dude, Hawk of the Screwed Up Click and Danjah Ray. The album maintained its composure and garnered some much needed attention. This record also challenges the musical limits of Hip-Hop in an attempt to appeal to a wider and much more diverse fan base.

- Deadly-Grounds.blogspot.com

'Where's The Party Yaar' comes in the wake of numerous cross-over films made in recent time, starting from the much known 'Bend It Like Beckham' and 'Monsoon Wedding' to lesser known 'American Desi', 'American Chai', 'Green Card Fever' and many more from the same clan. Though such films have lost the initial sheen, still movies set in a similar setting are being produced regularly out of which 'WTPY' is the most recent. Produced by Sunil Thakkar and directed by Benny Mathews, this movie about a party has been lying in the cans for quite some time and is finally ready for the release now. A 'Music Masala' film, 'WTPY' stars a bunch of newcomers and has music by a variety of musicians and lyricists. As has been the trend with these kind of movies, it is a doubt whether all these songs will even make a one line appearance in the movie, let alone a full fledged one. Most of the times, a number of songs are stuffed in an album for boosting the movie's publicity regardless of the fact that they may never appear on the big screen. Now this has to be seen whether 'WTPY' is any different.

Since the music directors, singers and lyricists are quite diverse in all the songs; we will go song by song. So here we go...


Move Your Feet Now
Singer and Lyrics: Southern Intellect

A rap'n'reggae number, this one is a complete track from the 'foreign land' with no trace of any bhangra or a Punjabi element. But hey, do we hear the faint vocals of Lata Mangeshkar in the background a la 'Kaliyon Ka Chaman' in a western track some time back? Signs of another controversy coming up? Well, may be, if the necessary rights have not been bought!
- www.bollywoodhungama.com